Choosing a Philosophical Life - a podcast by Simon Drew

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: https://www.simonjedrew.com/choosing-a-philosophical-life/

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CHOOSING A PHILOSOPHICAL LIFE

Lately I’ve been trying to carefully observe myself and the world around me. I’ve been trying to see things for what they are, and not just for what they appear to be. And I say that I’m “trying” because one conclusion that I keep coming to is that no matter how hard I try, I will always simply be me, as I am, viewing this incredibly complex world through a lens that is limited in scope to say the least. It’s as if there’s an extravagant party happening in the mansion, and I’m trying to see what’s happening inside by looking through a keyhole on the kitchen door. I know there’s plenty of grand and exciting things happening, but for now all I can do is trust that with enough time I’ll be able to put a few pieces together. 

I tend to have quite an obsessive personality, and I have definitely jumped around a lot in my life. From a young age my parents could see that if I was going to try something then I really wanted to try it. If I was riding horses then I wanted to be the cowboy! If I was playing music then I wanted to be on the stage becoming the best entertainer I could be! When I went to church I wanted to look the part, and when I wasn’t going to church I wanted to have all of the perfectly good reasons why I wasn’t. I’d like to say that this kind of “all in or nothing” attitude came down to a desire to give 100% to everything I was doing, but honestly in hindsight I can say that I wasn’t trying to go all in on anything. Rather, I think I was trying to give the appearance that I knew what life was all about when in reality I had absolutely no idea, and in trying to appear to be something, I now see that I was simply hiding the fact that I knew nothing. To me, the appearance of having the answers was more important than actually having any answers, and so I jumped around from one thing to another, always tasting but never being nourished. 

Have you ever noticed that we all seem to think we have the answers? You only have to look as far back as your last family gathering to see that we all have a pretty unhealthy relationship with the words “I don’t know.” Just look around the world and see the division that is created simply because we can’t admit that we don’t have all the answers. Left vs right, religious vs atheist, woman vs man, black vs white. Every belief structure is the one true way, every ideology is the winner, every experience is the truth. But how could that be? How is it that there are so many ways, so many winners and so many truths? Well if you’ll let me, I’d like to invite you to look through the same keyhole that I’m looking through so that you might see what I see. Get comfortable, turn on your imagination, and meditate on the ideas to follow.

How do humans perceive time? Well, it seems clear that we have an extremely narrow vision of time. This narrow vision is probably shown most clearly in our tendency to think only within the confines of our own lifetimes. We’re driven by all kinds of biological and psychological phenomena that help us to survive day to day, we

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